Want to eliminate “piracy” of copyrighted materials? I’d suggest that the first step would be to establish sane copyright terms, but let’s leave that aside for the moment. (Briefly, I favor the 14-year term established in Britain and America in the 18th century.)

But a good second step might be the creation of a well-ordered digital resale market, as Elliot Sedegah recommends:

Mary Moneybags is able to purchase a movie at the original price of $$$ from the retailer, and later has the right to sell the movie to Charlie Cheapo after a specified blackout period for a price of $$. To allow this capability, a small amount of money ($) is paid to the retailer as a fee to provide the clearinghouse, and, importantly, to the original content producer as well.
Under this framework, retailers benefit from charging a fee to provide an internet clearinghouse for resale content, and content producers benefit through the introduction of “droit de suite” for digital content, a rights law currently used in the European marketplace for fine art. We also anticipate that this system will reduce piracy, which costs an estimated $6 Billion a year in lost movie sales, and may introduce a type of social networking component to the marketplace so popular in physical used music stores.

Who will be the first mover?